Tomodachi Life Review: Weird, ridiculous and endearing

Tomodachi Life is a very Japanese, quirky life simulator-style game for the 3DS that combines the best things about Animal Crossing, the 3DS’s StreetPass mini-games and the Sims.

Yet, while it’s a fun and an interesting experiment, even fans of similar titles like Animal Crossing: New Leaf and the Harvest Moon series, might be turned off by the title’s hands-off approach to gameplay.

The basic gameplay of Tomodachi Life has you creating and importing Mii avatars into the game and seeing how they interact. Watching how these imported Miis bounced off each other in strange, often hilarious nonsensical ways, is the best part of Tomodachi Life and the game’s main appeal.

I made my virtual girlfriend wear a hamster suit with an ice cream cone hat and my older brother dress in an Arabian costume while running on the beach. Tomodachi Life’s detailed personality system also ensures you’ll never know quite what to expect from your citizens and this helps keep the player engaged.

You never actually force your Miis to interact and instead work as a problem solver, ending feuds between residents, facilitating relationships and feeding your virtual family members strange foods. Like Animal Crossing, Tomodachi Life is designed to be played in short, daily bursts, rather than extended play sessions.

Dressing up your Mii creations in ridiculous costumes is often hilarious.

Miis can either be imported from your friends list, discovered through StreetPass or created with the game’s relatively detailed creation system. Miis can also be made by taking a picture of someone’s face with the 3DS’ camera (this feature works surprisingly well).

This means you’re able to add real-life friends, family members and even celebrities to your island. If you’ve always wanted to go for a walk on the beach with a Shaquille O’Neal lookalike Mii, now is your chance. Miis also speak real words, created through a text-to-speech robotic voice, making the island feel more vibrant and alive.

Much like the Animal Crossing franchise, certain events in Tomodachi Life are based on real world times and dates. Continuing in the vein of Animal Crossing, Tomodachi Life throws out the typical objectives and to-do lists you see in most video games and instead lets the player interact with the island’s citizens at their own pace.

Clothing, food and Mii apartments can be customized, allowing the player to makeTomodachi Life’s island and Miis truly feel like your creations. Miis can even form relationships and get married, which is where the controversy surrounding the game popped up a few weeks ago.

He was surprisingly pleased with this dress.

Not including the ability to engage in same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life feels like a huge oversight on the part of Nintendo, especially because the entire point of the game is to allow the player to create a hilarious world based on their real lives. Nintendo has since apologized for not including the feature, so hopefully same-sex relationships make their way to the next iteration of the franchise.

While I had fun with Tomodachi Life during my first few hours with the game, the experience eventually started to fall apart. After spending approximately a dozen hours with the game, I quickly became bored with my little island full of virtual friends and family members. The various mini-games you’re able to play with your Miis, often involving memory or guessing games, are uninspired and far too simple, although they’re also a commendable effort by Nintendo to add some variety to the game.

I spent most of my time with the game trying to meet the random needs of my Miis and for a few hours this is actually quite compelling and reminiscent of taking care of multiple Tamagotchi virtual pets at the same time. Unfortunately, after uncovering and resolving most of the situations that pop up in the game, the enjoyment I once received from watching my island full of virtual friends interact with one another disappeared, leaving me with few reasons to continue playing.

Miis can even get married and form relationships in Tomodachi life

Still, there’s a certain voyeuristic almost social media-like thrill in watching your Mii creations interact with one another. The game also has a great sense of humour and in many ways, simplifies the life simulation formula the Sims created years ago.

Tomodachi Life might not have the lasting appeal of a title like Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but the game certainly offers up an interesting experience — one that will probably appeal for a longer period of time to a much younger audience.